I rewrote the blog in C#, and I’m adding a few features. I wrote the first one in VB.NET, and since I had to learn C# for work, I figured I might as well put it to good use. The calendar that lets you pick blog dates doesn’t distinguish yet between days with blogs, and days where I didn’t feel like blogging. I’ll have that fixed later tonight – had to learn to crawl first.

I’ve got the database structure set up to allow for multiple images per blog entry this time, plus additional members and comments. By next week, hopefully you’ll be able to scribble in something meaningful here. Knowing you, though, I doubt you’ll pull it off.

Scrubbling bubbles… Erika’s going to kill me for putting this on the site, but here goes. Last year when she had her last Jetta, we went to the car wash to clean it up. She doesn’t do that sort of thing often, but when she brought along an assortment of cleaning tools and chemicals, I didn’t think twice. However, in the midst of washing the car, I noticed her using the scratchy side of a sponge, scrubbing like mad, trying to get rid of a dull spot in the paint. She couldn’t understand why the harder she scrubbed, the worse it seemed to get. I got a good laugh out of that one, and at least she learned her lesson on the old Jetta rather than the new one or my Volvo.

Just now, waiting for my coffee to brew, I noticed that my Museum of Modern Art mug was starting to get a little shabby. The MoMA lettering was dull in spots. I promptly took a scrubbing sponge, and – well, the rest is probably obvious. And no, that’s not glare on the mug in the picture, where the “Art, New York” is missing the bottom of its letters.

I miss writing cursive. I got into an email conversation with Susie Donahue, my high school sweetheart, about the problems with contemporary education systems. I whined and complained about how teachers are bound to a doctrine of useless junk that doesn’t help kids get through real life – I mean, how many kids need to know the area inside a triangle, versus how many need to know how to buy a home? I guarantee you that over the course of my life, I’m going to buy more homes than I am going to estimate triangle size.

One thing led to another, and I found myself writing longhand on a piece of graph paper. Bizarre. I haven’t written cursive in years, maybe even a decade. All those hours I wasted scribbling away in elementary school. I wish I’d have learned to draw well instead.

She asked me why I’d started my own web site, and I couldn’t remember. It seems so long ago that I got started, and I can’t even remember what state I was living in. I remember getting my first site on Geocities, but I think I migrated off that pretty quickly because the ads were so invasive. I remember putting a lot of my fiction on there, and I don’t even write fiction anymore, much less put it on my site. I also recall doing animations of song lyrics with the precursor to Flash, back when Macromedia first got it started. Wish I’d have kept those.

If you’re interested in seeing old versions of my sites, check out the Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org/. It’s a free project that aims to archive everything on the web, and make it publicly available. My site used to be called www.WickedLife.com – and man, have things changed.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, Mom & Caryl! I’ve always been so proud of both of you, and I love you so much that I wanted to let the world know what great mothers you’ve been, and continue to be. So, world, meet my Mom and meet my second mom, Caryl, and read up on what great women they are, and how they’ve inspired me to be who I am.

As I sit here in my car outside Starbucks, NPR is doing a story on blogging. They describe a site with One Minute Vacations – sixty-second sound clips of people’s trips in various cities. You can jump online, take a quick respite from your busy day, and transport yourself to Ghana, Stockholm, or any number of interesting places. Nifty. I prefer photoblogging myself – Photojunkie is a great example. So I’m listening to NPR talk about a site about blogging, while I surf it, from my car. (Life doesn’t get much better than this – or does it?

Over the last couple of days, we’ve talked a lot at work about switching programming languages to Java. I’m blogging about this because I think it’s a pivotal moment in my career.

I don’t have any interest in learning Java: over the last couple of years, I’ve gotten more and more interested in true RAD tools. My recent research into integrated UML tools only solidified that push: it came as a shock to me that there are UML tools out there that will literally produce parts of your code if you do your design work in diagrams up front. The nicest (and most expensive) ones, like Rational XDE, even integrate completely into the development environment, so you’re using one tool to do all your work. How cool is that?

But back to Java. I’m faced with the prospect of moving to the polar opposite end of programming: doing everything in text editors, no wizards, no drag-and-drop, no work automation. Is that how I want to spend my day? Can I see myself staring at text editors for hours on end? No way.

So then, forget the company for a moment: what do I want to do for a living over the next five or ten years? I love doing analysis, project management, not text editors. Long morning already, I guess.

Erika’s Jetta got hail damage. A strong thunderstorm hit Hurst, TX yesterday, where Erika was attending training. She ran out and drove it under a walkway, but the rear end still hung out a few feet, so there’s dimples on the trunk, roof, and side panels. Not too bad, but we’ll see how much it’ll cost on Monday when I’ve got an appointment with Geico to get the estimate done.

I’m addicted to the new Fleetwood Mac CD, “Say You Will”. It’s pleasantly melodic, a great alternative to the rock that I’ve listened to lately. My last CD in heavy rotation is the underground Better Than Ezra LP called Surprise, and it’s quite a contrast to the over-produced Fleetwood Mac.